Iván
Portela’s latest collection of poetry, Cantos
de Tir na n-Og,was
published in 2004 by CONACULTA, the Mexican National Council
for Literature and the Arts. As the title suggests, the Irish
myth of Tír na nÓg,
the Land of Eternal Youth, and Ireland are the principal
inspiration for these poems. Portela is a university lecturer
and since 1981 has taught at the Universidad Iberoamericana, a
private Jesuit university in Mexico City, where he has been
recognised for excellence in teaching. He is also a key
participant in a variety of poetry workshops. Among his
published books are La otra cara de Irlanda (The Other Face of Ireland) (1986), Cantos
Ivánicos (1992) and Cantos
de fuego (Songs of Fire) (1998).

Portela
is a delightfully anomalous poet. Born in Santa Clara, Cuba in
1944, he moved to Mexico when he was nineteen years old, was
subsequently naturalised as Mexican and has made ancient
Ireland his poetic homeland. He has taken on the cloak of the
‘bard of the Mexican Irish’, a Cuban-Mexican Oisín, in
search of his true homeland. He must be the only Latin
American poet to have written so passionately and extensively
about Ireland and Celtic mythology.

Pura
Lopéz Colomé, a key contemporary Mexican poet and the
official translator of Seamus Heaney into Spanish - from whom
Portela takes a number of epigraphs for poems in this
collection - establishes in her introduction to the collection
Fervor por Irlanda
(A Passion for Ireland) that there is no better legend or
place than Tír na nÓg to characterise Portela’s poetic
undertaking:

Ancient Erin has always
been the exclusive vehicle for his poetic explorations, whose
purpose is none other than to find a mirror which reflects his
true God, he who lives in him and in all that surrounds him,
God of meanness and generosity, of pleasure and misery. In
order that the atrocities of the world do not silence him, he
returns time and time again to the one true source, the lyric
[…].
(11). [1]

The
lyrical poem, like Tír na nÓg, represents for Portela the
land of possibility, the land of beauty and truth, where he
feels closest to God.

Cantos
de Tir na n-Og,
his latest offering of cantos,
which translates as ‘songs’, like the titles of his other
collections, emphasises his faith in the lyrical form. The
collection comprises just over a hundred poems, all of which
are dedicated to Ireland and its Celtic mythology. The
collection is divided into two sections, ‘Cantares para Oisín
de Tir na n-Og (Poems for Oisín from Tír na nÓg)’ and
‘Como la dorada Fáinne
Óir en el Reino de Erín (Like the Golden Fáinne Óir (Ring) in the Kingdom of Erin)’. The epilogue is
taken from W.B. Yeats: ‘There is a country called Tir na
n-Og, which means the country of the young for age and death
have not found it’ (from Fairy
and Folk Tales), thus setting the parameters for
Portela’s poetic exploration of the land of eternal youth.
Yeats is an explicit influence throughout the poems, with
direct quotations taken from his better-known poems. Seamus
Heaney also features in these poems, amongst a colourful array
of historical and mythological personalities who amicably
inhabit the mystical world created in Cantos de Tir na n-Og, alongside the embodiment of the beloved for
Portela, Teresa Cuddy.

The
first poem sets the tone for the collection, as Portela
invokes important figures from the past, lamenting his own
absence from their country:

¡Oh,
canto de Irlanda, canto de Tara,

canto
de Daedra,

canto
de Ulster, canto de Erín!,

¡canto
de Patricio, canto do Aimirgín, canto de Munster,

canto
de Connacht, canto de Leinster … canto de Oisín!

(Oh,
song of Ireland, song of Tara,

song
of Deirdre,

song
of Ulster, song of Erin!

song
of Saint Patrick, song of Amergin, song of Munster,

song
of Connacht, song of Leinster … song of Oisín!)

Along
with Yeats and Heaney, Amergin, the poet warrior of Conchobar
Mac Nessa, who was to become the chief poet of Ulster,
frequently appears in the poems, and Portela takes a quotation
from Amergin as the epigraph for a later poem. The
geographical expanse of this stanza, encompassing all four
provinces of Ireland, is reflected in the following poems in
the collection, which extend, as the title of one poem
suggests, from New Ross to Salthill, taking in key literary
sites including Ben Bulben and Joyce’s Martello Tower in
Dublin.

The
poems and their notes bear testament to the poet’s belief
that being in key locations in Ireland grounds his vision, so
to speak, and lends his words the authority of experience, of
having been there. The vibrant synthesis of Irish myths,
legends and history in these poems suggests that these stories
are not only taken from written material, but also from local
oral storytelling, thus explaining the poet’s insistence on
having been there and the authenticity this seems to give his
vision. It also links these poems to this tradition of
storytelling as a way of affirming and celebrating identity,
in this case, the adopted identity of the poet.

Portela
takes on the role of the bard by invoking the mythical and
historical voices on his travels. His experiences in Ireland
seem to have given his poetry the decisive focus that he
desires. In one of the more revealing poems, ‘Estoico
(Stoical)’ (28), we understand that for Portela travel and
memories of travel renew the heart. The experiences are
implicitly connected to the desire to survive the darker side
of the world, and to do so without regret. ‘Estoico’ ends
with the image of the soul being liberated between Tara and
the plenitude of God, thus giving us an essential key to the
way in which Tír na nÓg and Ireland are places not only of
mythical significance, but are, more importantly, mystical.

The
collection is sadly blighted by orthographic errors,
particularly in place names, which are often unnecessarily and
irritatingly misspelt, thus detracting from the authenticity
which the poet stresses he derives from the geographical
location, such as Pulatomish (Pollatomish, County Mayo) which
was almost unrecognisable.

In
this first poem, while the poet invokes the heroes of the
past, he also experiences an exile from their country ‘Soy
hijo de Usnach, voz de Cuchulain / levanta tu cetro (I am
Uisneach’s son, the voice of Cuchulain, raise your
sceptre)’. He feels both at home in and excluded from their
country. The refrain throughout the poem is ‘¿Por qué no
estoy allí? (Why am I not there?)’. While the poems
celebrate a definite period in Ireland, they also lament
Portela’s ultimate separation from the country and its
‘invisible regions’. The poems in the collection take up
this theme time and time again, as the poet laments that while
being filled with memories of Ireland, ‘No despierto en
Irlanda …(I don’t wake up in Ireland …)’ (81). Sadly,
while he is full of his experience in Ireland, it is but a
blip in universal time, so small as to be almost
inconsequential. In a salute to Joyce’s Finnegan’s
Wake, he describes a day in Dublin as ‘un fragmento de
quarks (a fragment of quarks)’ (86).

As
Pura López Colomé has insightfully argued, for Portela the
lyrical poem plays a redemptive role, and, like Tír na nÓg,
it creates a space where he can retreat from violence and evil
in the world and attempt to become one with nature. In one
poem, it is the pull of the waves which lead to poetry - ‘y
las olas arrastrando la poesía (and the waves drawing out the
poems)’. He hears the lyre in Heaney’s voice (27). Portela
embraces an Orphic tradition which believes in the power of
the poem to heal and redeem. He follows in the footsteps of
the Romantics who sought to address and remedy our loss of
spiritualism and the increasing reliance on technology as our
present and future salvation. Portela explicitly joins Yeats,
who, though classified a Modernist, considered himself to be
one of ‘the last Romantics’.

In
addition to the overarching lyrical and mystical tone of the
collection, there are welcome moments of irony and
self-conscious humour. Frequent references to ‘Irish Mist’
and the description of the house of the beloved Eileen, which
‘como todas las casas irlandesas, / aromatizada de pollo
frito, té negro y spray de cabellera (like all Irish homes, /
was fragranced with fried chicken, black tea and hair
spray)’ (71), provide an effective contrast to the
mythological framework.

An
effectively ironic poem is ‘De Cerro Calvo a Ben Bulben
(From Cerro Calvo to Ben Bulben)’ (128-9). For me this was
one of the more interesting in the collection and it initially
caught my attention because of its use of a children’s rhyme
and the resonance of its singsong quality in the poem overall.
In ‘De Cerro Calvo…’, Portela playfully converses with
Yeats and compares Yeats’ memories of a waterfall by Ben
Bulben with his own memories of the sound of the river Ochoa,
which courses over the Cerro Calvo mountain beside his native
town Santa Clara. Expanding on the Yeatsian romantic image,
Portela adds his own personal vision, including an abandoned
fridge, and the bombs and dreams of 1958, the year Batista was
overthrown by Castro and fled to the US with Rivero Agüero.
Agüero is parodied in the poem, in an adaptation of the
children’s rhyme ‘Mambrú se fue a la guerra’ (a French
children’s song which made fun of the Duke of Malborough
after the French defeated the English in 1709. This song
arrived in various forms to Latin America. We presume this is
the Cuban version). What is remarkable about the poem is that
the romantic vision prevails in the end, in spite of the
brutal reality and loss conveyed in the poem. Yet as this and
other poems insist, this is not mere escapism. And it is in
Ireland and in his vision of Ireland that the poet most
profoundly experiences release and connection, refuge and
redemption.

Portela
is well versed in Irish literature, mythology and folklore. He
moves with ease between a variety of forms and contexts.
However, at times I wished for a more complex engagement with
Ireland and even Mexico. While the poems insist on the
poet’s attachment to Ireland, and his sensations of finding
his home there, the poems sometimes fail to communicate why
his attachment is so intense and enduring. A number of times
Portela bring his images of Ireland into sharp contrast with
the grey Megalopolis, both representing his place of
residence, the sprawling Mexico City, but also other giant
urban developments, such as New York and Beijing (Peking),
‘las monstruosidades de asfalto (the asphalt monsters)’
(p.106). These repeatedly appear in his poems as the
antithesis of the spirit of Ireland.

Though
Portela admits that he believes there is something deep and
good in the ‘sea of asphalt’ which has tried to kill him
but cannot, because ‘the honour of Diarmuid is sacrosanct’
(106), the binarism of the poems often felt restrictive.
Having lived in Mexico City and being Irish, I wished to
escape the opposition between Ireland and the megalopolis, as
it prevents one from seeing Ireland in all its complexity as a
country with a complicated history as both a colony and a
source of imperialism, and the badly named ‘Troubles’
which have plagued Northern Ireland. This vision also negates
the vibrancy and colour of Mexico City, which for me was also
a place of surprising spirituality.

But
these are personal preferences, and the vision in Cantos de Tir na n-Og is definitively personal. Indeed, it is on the
power of finding a homeland other than one’s own that the
poems are most insistent. That Portela is an exile from his
original homeland, Cuba, explains some of the poignancy of his
poetic vision of a mother country to which he can belong. Thus
this passionate search for a true homeland leads to an idyllic
mythical Ireland, an image which inevitably does not account
for an anomalous state, as David Lloyd describes it. That Oisín
was not content to stay in Tír na nÓg, for he yearned to see
friends and family, is also a poignant reminder of the pain
involved in exile.

It
is in the idea of Tír na nÓg being his spiritual and
mystical homeland that we come closest to understanding
Portela’s obsession with Ireland. While the geographical
location recedes, Portela’s memories of Ireland stay with
him in Mexico: ‘Dublín quedaste … / sueño sellado /
en el secreto / de mi canción (Dublin you remain … / a
dream sealed / in the secret / of my song)’. Ireland becomes
a place created within him and within his poems. He twice (28,
102) returns to the image of his heart being renewed and his
faith reaffirmed, with the moving expression ‘el calor de la
fe se renueva (the warmth of my faith is renewed)’,
attributing this mystical experience both times to ‘el Canto
de Ciervo (the Deer's Cry)’, also know as ‘St Patrick's
Breastplate’. The beautiful words of this song give him the
resilience he needs to survive the atrocities of the
world.

In
one of the poems from the second half of the collection, the
poet appeals to St. Patrick, asking him to pray for all of us,
to pray for him. Pura Lopéz Colomé concludes her
introduction with characteristic eloquence when she says of
these poems: ‘The curative capacity of poetry is clear,
whether we call it an adopted land, an illuminated insularity
or youth which is being perpetually renewed. It is the true Tír
na nÓg.’ [2]